Mega-retailer Target has a collection of holiday music up at Target.com/HolidayAlbum, and Nashville singer Natalie Hemby's Rhodes-led, smoky-voiced "Perfect Gift" is among the offerings. (It's joined by tunes from Wavves and Best Coast, Coconut Records, Bishop Allen, Guster, Blackalicious and a host of others.)

MusicCityUnsigned.com recently issued Music City Unsigned Family Christmas, a collection stocked with live, acoustic versions of new and time-tested songs from a heap of local talents, including Sandra McCracken with Derek Webb, Andy Osenga and Angel Snow, Amy Stroup and others. Contributors to the album gathered in early December at 3rd & Lindsley to perform those tunes, and you can watch and listen to Stroup's performance of the strummy, hooky "You Make the Cold Disappear" above.

The band also has some non-holiday music on the way. They've finished up a new album, called A Jillion Kicks, and plan to release it in the spring of 2011. According to the band, "it will include several remakes of your old favorite Heypenny songs as well as a whole slew of new ones."

For those of you who like to plan early: Heypenny also has a hometown album release show planned on February 26 at the Mercy Lounge.

Big & Rich fans have to wait until July to see the duo on stage together again -- they're on the lineup for the 2011 Craven Country Jamboree in Canada, running July 14-17, 2011. But last week, Big & Rich's Rich half, country voice John Rich, showed off his chemistry with a new duo-mate: actor/comedian/late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon.

Rich dropped by Fallon's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, Dec. 16 to help the host reprise his holiday tune "Drunk on Christmas," and for the occasion, Rich revisited the seasonal apparel he donned last year as grand marshal for the 57th annual Nashville Christmas Parade. (Big hint: It's a Santa suit.)

Attentive fans might have heard his holiday single "Christmas Just Does This to Me" around this time last year -- Wertz had the song streaming at his official site, but it wasn't available for download. This year, he's offered the gift of a downloadable Christmas song. Wertz wrote the tune last year with friend/contemporary Christian singer Brandon Heath, and, Wertz says, "literally went in the next day and recorded it."

Wertz is still a big fan of the laid-back tune, too.

"It seriously is one of the best songs I've ever written (it even makes my mom cry)," he writes on his website, "but I'll let YOU be the judge!"

It'd be hard to expect anything other than a lighthearted take from local bandage-clad outfit Here Come The Mummies, who traffic in "Local Terrifying Funk From Beyond the Grave." But their audio-visual approach to Christmas music is particularly... funky. The band has something of a bubbling viral hit on their hands with their "Carol of the Belts" (more than 200,000 plays and counting as of this posting), and you can watch it above. But one word of warning: If you're easily offended, maybe skip it, and if you're, say, of grade-school age, definitely skip it.

Today, we check out "Hear the Angels Singing" from country duo Burns & Poe.

We expect that you'll be able to hear this tune live on Saturday (Dec. 18), as Keith Burns and Michelle Poe perform at a Christmas show at The Listening Room (209 10th Ave. S., Suite 200), starting at 7 p.m. (The duo will be joined by special guests Karen Staley, Gary Hannon, Shawn Hammonds, Kate Taylor, Labeling Delores, Lathan Moore, Lorna Flowers and Burns' former Trick Pony bandmate Ira Dean.) But you can take an advance listen below.

Tickets to Saturday's show are $5 with a toy donation, available at the door.

Today, we have "One Last Christmas" from contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Matthew West. This isn't lighthearted holiday fare: West uses the song to share the story of 2-year-old Dax Locke, who died after struggling with leukemia in 2009. The young boy's story inspired people in his home town of Washington, Ill. and elsewhere to decorate early for his favorite holiday.

"The doctors told his parents that most likely, he wouldn't make it to see Christmas," West says as an introduction to the video. "This song is inspired by the true story of how a family, and a whole town, rallied together to make sure that this little boy could have one last Christmas."

West is donating "One Last Christmas" video sale proceeds (from www.matthewwest.com) and a portion of his artist and writer royalties to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital -- the hospital that cared for Dax -- with the aim of raising $1.6 million dollars, the cost of running St. Jude's for one day. West will also be heading up a benefit concert in Dax's hometown on Thursday, Dec. 30. The event, held at Five Points Washington (360 N. Wilmor Rd., Washington, Ill.), begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 ($20 gold circle seating), and more information is available at www.fivepointswashington.org.

Benson tells the A.V. Club folks that his interest in the song was first piqued when he heard it in a club in England. Some helpful clubgoers helped him suss out the responsible band.

"It was during Christmastime and they blasted it, and everyone's singing along to it," he said, agreeing with his interviewer that the tune is something of a "Christmas anthem" across the pond.

Now that he's back home, Benson is getting ready to hit the studio to record a new solo album, which'll follow up 2009's My Old, Familiar Friend. In the meantime, take a listen to his holiday offering above, and check back for more locally generated holiday sounds.